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Abscond

Eric Prochaska

    To the dismay of early April commuters wearing either light jackets or blouses alone, the afternoon buses ran the air and the evening subways worked their heaters.
    We conspired with a pair of folding camp chairs and a cooler bag only large enough for four beers and two compressed sandwiches and absconded to a place where every four seconds your skin fidgeted as if a bug had landed on you. Under the not-swaying strands of the weeping willow, whose virgin green buds trickled down like suspended droplets waiting in line for spring’s full dawn, we watched our bobbers barely wobble atop the not-warm-enough lake. We had suffered three subway lines and two buses with all that gear, and the city skyline was still so close you could imagine its shadow engulfing you before sunset.
    “I don’t think we’re going to catch anything,” I said again.
    “So? We’re out of the city.”
    “Still, I don’t want your first time fishing to be a bust.”
    She was in no hurry to respond.
    “Was your hometown like this?” she asked with the enthusiasm of possibly animating snapshots I had described over the past few years.
    I scanned the shore, rough with tawny grass struggling to hold on just another week for warmth and maybe rain.
    “We’re all alone.” The father and son on the path across the lake may as well have been in Paraguay.
    “I can’t even see anything,” she said, getting up. The chair tottered on the uneven ground. Again she approached the edge, scoured the surface with squinted eyes, childishly cuter than she could attempt to dissemble. “Wait! There’s some fish in here! Look!”
    Indeed, there was a swarm of bait-sized pan fish. They shot across areas the length of my forearm, hoping for one of the insects which must have hatched early, during that warm spell in mid-March.
    “Hang on,” I said, going to the cooler. I tore a corner of bread off a sandwich. “Here. Feed them this.”
    They hit at the bread, which deteriorated as it sank. Tickled by their follies, she giggled each time she dropped a morsel among the anxious centrifuge of fish.

*            *            *

    “If I had known we wouldn’t even get a nibble, I probably wouldn’t have bothered,” I said, looking out the window at the vaguely blue dark. The rhythm of the train rolling over the joints in the tracks was a comforting soundtrack.
    Turning to investigate her silence, I discovered her sleeping in the cradled repose I imagine too uncomfortable to fall asleep in, though she repeatedly proved me wrong. I need to just buy the ring. I need to have it with me on a perfect day like this. I couldn’t possibly plan a better moment to propose.

*            *            *

    That was soon after the abortion, when we were still sure we were going to make it after all.

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